The Efficiency Expert eBook

He realized that he knew more about the Compton murder
case than any one else. He was of the opinion
that he could clear it up if he were almost any one
other than the Lizard, but with the record of his past
life against him, would any one believe him?
In order to prove his assertion it would be necessary
to make admissions that might incriminate himself,
and there would be Murray and the Compton millions
against him; and as he pondered these things there
ran always through his mind the words of the girl,
“You and I are the only friends he has.”

“Hell,” ejaculated the Lizard as he rose
from his chair and prepared for bed.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Thetrial.

Edith Hudson spent a restless night, and early in
the morning, as early as she thought she could reach
him, she called the office of Jimmy’s attorney.
She told the lawyer that some new evidence was to have
been brought in to him and asked if he had received
it. Receiving a negative reply she asked that
she be called the moment it was brought in.

All that day and the next she waited, scarcely leaving
her room for fear that the call might come while she
was away. The days ran into weeks and still there
was no word from the Lizard.

Jimmy was brought to trial, and she saw him daily
in the courtroom and as often as they would let her
she would visit him in jail. On several occasions
she met Harriet Holden, also visiting him, and she
saw that the other young woman was as constant an
attendant at court as she.

The State had established as unassailable a case as
might be built on circumstantial evidence. Krovac
had testified that Torrance had made threats against
Compton in his presence, and there was no way in which
Jimmy’s attorneys could refute the perjured statement.
Jimmy himself had come to realize that his attorney
was fighting now for his life, that the verdict of
the jury was already a foregone conclusion and that
the only thing left to fight for now was the question
of the penalty.

Daily he saw in the court-room the faces of the three
girls who had entered so strangely into his life.
He noticed, with not a little sorrow and regret, that
Elizabeth Compton and Harriet Holden always sat apart
and that they no longer spoke. He saw the effect
of the strain of the long trial on Edith Hudson.
She looked wan and worried, and then finally she was
not in court one day, and later, through Harriet Holden,
he learned that she was confined to her room with
a bad cold.

Jimmy’s sentiments toward the three women whose
interests brought them daily to the court-room had
undergone considerable change. The girl that
he had put upon a pedestal to worship from afar, the
girl to whom he had given an idealistic love, he saw
now in another light. His reverence for her had
died hard, but in the face of her arrogance, her vindictiveness
and her petty snobbery it had finally succumbed, so
that when he compared her with the girl who had been
of the street the latter suffered in no way by the
comparison.